Bound South Read online

  “They’re so fucking annoying,” I say just as Frederick is locking the car doors.

  Frederick looks frantically around the parking lot as if he thinks I’m talking about the homeless men.

  “I mean the kids at Coventry,” I say. “The Crispy Christians especially. They’re such hypocrites. I mean, they all drive Ford Explorers or BMWs and the girls wear those James Avery crosses around their necks. I mean, instead of spending money on a gold cross, why don’t they give the money to the poor? Haven’t they read that part of the Bible where it says that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the gates of heaven?”

  “Ansley Park isn’t really the slums, is it?” he asks.

  “I never said I was a Christian.”

  “There’s that group that volunteers at Habitat once a month,” he says.

  “Yeah, but that’s just so they can put it down on their college applications.”

  “Don’t get too cynical, Caroline,” he says as he holds the door to Fry Daddy’s open for me.

  “Okay, Dad,” I say.

  Frederick looks so annoyed by my comment that he actually resembles my father.

  Fry Daddy’s smells like old grease. The girl behind the counter is black, like everyone else who works there, and like everyone else, she looks bored.

  “Hello and welcome to Fry Daddy’s,” she says, not bothering to differentiate her words with inflection. “Would y’all like our Daddy-O of a deal?”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Buy two Whoa Daddy buckets of chicken for only the price of one plus five dollar,” she says.

  “Gee, that’s a lot of chicken,” says Frederick, sounding like he’s in a commercial.

  Suddenly, I feel inspired. “Let’s get the extra bucket and give it to the men in the parking lot. We can just pass it around and people can take a piece.”

  “How many pieces are in a bucket?” asks Frederick, leaning into the counter. I hope he doesn’t get a grease stain on his R.E.M. T-shirt. The shirt is a classic. It’s designed to look as if it were inside out, like the song.

  “The Whoa Daddy has sixteen pieces: four thigh, four leg, four wing, four breast,” the girl says.

  “Okay,” he says. “Give us the Daddy-O of a deal.”

  FREDERICK WAITS IN the car with our bucket of chicken in his lap while I stand in front of the restaurant, trying to figure out how to offer the second bucket to the homeless men. I sort of assumed people would just line up for it, but nobody is paying any attention to me.

  I walk over to the guy standing closest to me and ask if he wants a piece of chicken. I must have asked in too low a voice because he doesn’t say anything. But then this other guy, who’s wearing overalls with no shirt, asks if he can have some.

  “Sure,” I say. “Let me get you a piece.”

  I pluck out a breast and hand it to him. And then I am surrounded by men, all saying things to me at once.

  “Hey, can I have some of that?”

  “Look at this little angel with her chicken.”

  “Hey, over here, you wanna share more of that bird?”

  “Give me one of them legs.”

  “What’s somebody so sweet and pretty doing over here at FD’s?”

  “You got yourself a husband, honey? I be your husband.”

  I keep handing out chicken, like it’s Halloween and I am distributing Snickers to the ankle biters. It occurs to me when I am almost at the end of the bucket that we definitely didn’t order enough to feed everyone. More and more men seem to be gathering in the parking lot, surrounding me. For a split second I wonder if maybe the bucket will become bottomless, like Jesus with his five loaves of bread that fed five thousand.

  Right. The gospel according to Caroline: teenage fuck-up aided by lecherous teacher feeds thousands with only one Whoa Daddy bucket of chicken.

  A man approaches me, taller than the others and wearing a little black knit hat over his short hair.

  “Y’all don’t crowd this nice lady in,” he says. “Back up, make a line.”

  He looks at me. “You want me to finish handing out this bird? It might be easier for me to be holding the empty bucket than you.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Thanks.” The bucket only has two pieces left in it, anyway. Most likely this guy will just eat them both himself.

  “We thank you kindly, ma’am,” he says. “And you be careful out there.”

  He glances at my skirt, which makes me suddenly aware of how very short it is. I walk back to the car, where Frederick waits. One guy calls after me, asks if I will please, please, please marry him and be his wife.

  “THAT WAS AWESOME,” I say. I’m practically jumping up and down in my seat I’m so pumped up. Frederick is heading east on Ponce toward Little Five Points. I know a guy who lives near there who sells pot. I wonder if Frederick would be into buying some.

  I glance at his profile, noticing the faint acne scars on his gaunt cheek.

  “What were you like in high school?” I ask. “When you were at Grady?”

  “Total loser,” he says, giving me a quick smile before focusing again on the road.

  And just like that, bang.

  I want him.

  Not because he’d been a loser, obviously, but because he didn’t try to pretend that he wasn’t one. I thought he would.

  I thought he would try and impress me, because he’s always sort of seeming to do that, but right now he’s just driving the car without even looking at me.

  Oh God.

  I really want him. I want him to pull into a parking lot so I can climb on top of his lap and feel his cock against me.

  Fuck.

  I am pulsing.

  I put my hand on his thigh. He glances down at it but doesn’t say anything. I move my hand up toward his crotch. He still doesn’t say anything. I rub it over the bulge where his penis is.

  “Caroline,” he says.

  “Frederick,” I say, imitating his pained tone.

  He pulls into the Kroger parking lot, parks the car, and turns in his seat toward me.

  “I told you last night how I feel about you. But right now, this afternoon, it’s not a good time for us to start anything too intense. You were really upset when you called me. You seemed distraught.”

  “So what? We fed the masses. Now I feel better.”

  “I think you’re too much of a mess right now for us to do anything. I would feel as if I were taking advantage of the situation.”

  It takes me a minute to get angry. But when my brain finally catches up to his words, I feel so angry that I want to punch him in the nose. And then I start crying, crying as hard as I cried after this morning’s waffle incident.

  “Caroline, I really like you,” he says.

  “Oh, fuck you,” I say.

  “Watch yourself,” he says.

  “Or, what—you’ll give me a detention?” I ask, aware even in my anger of the drama of our situation. Of how this would be the big climactic moment if we were in a play. Of how I tend to be my most clever when I’m feeling rejected.

  His face is scrunched up as if he’s in physical pain. If I were directing I would tell him he was overacting.

  “I masturbate every day thinking about you,” he says.

  Oh my God.

  “That’s not how you’re supposed to talk to your student,” I say, trying to joke, but I’m floored.

  He grabs my wrists with his hands, holds them tightly in front of me. “Caroline,” he says. “You’ve got to stop that. I want you. I really do. But I’m not going to play along as Humbert Humbert to your Lolita.”

  My instinct is to make another joke, to say something about how I’m too old to be Lolita, how he’ll have to teach much younger kids if that’s the kind of relationship he’s looking for. But for once I shut up.

  I lean in and start kissing him. It’s different from last night. This time I want it. I want him, Frederick, not my teacher, not my director, but
Frederick the man who bought the two buckets of chicken so I could give one away to the homeless, Frederick the man who is in this car with me.

  And the strangest thing is how surprising it all is, that this—this affair, as my mother would call it—is really happening. Even though we kissed last night, even though we flirted all last year, back then it felt like a game, like something that would never really happen.

  It’s the difference between standing near a fire and being the wood that burns.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Far from the Tree

  (Louise, Spring 2001)

  I keep the necklace in the blue velvet bag it came in, buried in a dresser drawer among my seldom-worn winter sweaters. Tonight at the party I will give it to Caroline, though I will not tell her the story of how it came to hang from Mother’s neck. Caroline will have no idea of its significance, and I plan to keep it that way. I could tell her Daddy gave it to Mother for some anniversary or another, though the truth is Daddy hated that piece of jewelry.

  I suppose I will have to come up with some sort of a dramatic story to tell my daughter. Because knowing Caroline, unless the necklace is infused with drama and intrigue, she won’t deign to wear it at all. It’s not exactly her taste in jewelry. It’s not ethnic enough.

  Caroline would love the drama of the real story, but telling her that would be too disruptive in too many ways. Plus, I don’t want to ruin her memories of her grandfather. She still thinks of him—who died when she was only six—as a sweet, genteel old man who loved to buy her candy bars and challenge her to games of checkers.

  So why give her the necklace at all, if I am going to lie about its origins, if I have doubts about whether or not she’ll wear it?

  I need to give her a gift, that’s why. After all, the party tonight is held in honor of her, to celebrate her admission to the acting program at Juilliard.

  She found out yesterday. This August she will leave for New York.

  When she first told me her good news I was awash in jealousy. I thought, Is this what it means to be a mess your whole life, that someday you will be rewarded with a big white envelope saying that truly you are one of the special few? My whole life I turned in papers on time and followed the rules. Caroline was nearly kicked out of Coventry every year for poor attendance, and yet she is admitted to arguably the best drama program in the country.

  I kept thinking, I am forty-seven years old and what do I have to show for myself besides a daughter whose life I envy? I will always be a spender. Never a creator. The closest I ever came to being an artist was getting an art history minor at Chapel Hill.

  But then it hit me: Caroline is leaving home. This girl whom I love but who drives me crazy is moving out of my house, most likely for good, for surely she will not return to Atlanta after living in New York, at least not for years and years to come, at which point we will have both mellowed out. Louise, I told myself, you have reason to celebrate.

  Inspired, I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of champagne from one of the bottles I was keeping in the refrigerator to open at the party. Pop! went the cork and I started to laugh. Putting the bottle down on the kitchen counter, I started dancing, just shaking like a two-year-old, feeling so good in my body, which is strong, if not terribly thin, from years and years of Bodypump and low-impact aerobics. Mission accomplished! I thought. I am almost done with this phase of my life!

  And for some reason I thought of Mother’s necklace, buried in the back of my dresser drawer. I thought, That little artifact does not belong in this new, lighter chapter of my life. I am turning a page, I have raised one daughter and will soon enough have raised my son, and I just do not need to be reminded of that piece of my (well, Mother’s) history anymore.

  It’s not a necklace I can just give to anyone, of course; it should stay in the family, but with someone who doesn’t appreciate its significance, who can actually wear it, who will have no idea of the real weight it carries.

  BEFORE I WRAP it up for Caroline, velvet bag and all, in white tissue paper with gold dots, I try on the necklace one more time, struggling with the clasp as Mother did the first time she wore it. It is hard to believe that I am older now than Mother was on the day she received it. Harder still to imagine how young I was on that day, just eight and a half years old. (Young enough to still mark half birthdays!)

  Young and foolish enough to hope that because Mother was up that morning she would remain up for every morning to come. And not only was Mother up, she was up and bathed and dressed, lipstick applied, long curls tied back with a scarf the color of heavy cream. She was in the kitchen making breakfast, making breakfast and humming, and in addition to bacon and eggs, she was also making me my very own pancake shaped like the letter L.

  I remember how, setting the table that morning, I took great care to fold the napkins just so, not wanting either side to stick out more than the other. It was important that everything go well. It was important that nothing upset Mother, that no mishap occur that might send her back to the solitude of her dark room.

  Despite my fear that Mother might once again retreat upstairs, I was happy. Happy to the point of giddiness. Happy that I was still on spring break and did not have to go to Miss Ann’s School that day. Happy that I had awoken to the feel of Mother’s soft lips on my cheek. (“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she had whispered.) Happy that I was about to eat a pancake that Mother had made for me. Happy that Gray-Gray was expecting kittens and was so close to delivering that Mamie had placed a large cardboard box in the far corner of the kitchen near the laundry room for her to use when it was time to give birth.

  I had already decided that I was going to name the kittens after Donald Duck’s nephews: Huey, Dewey, and Louie. When I told Mamie this, she asked what would I name the kittens if they were girls? I said that one of them would have to be named Daisy. This made Mamie smile and click her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

  “You a smart thing, ain’t you?” she said.

  After breakfast I planned to ask Mother if we could walk down the street to Winn Park. There I could show her how good I was at pumping, how high I could go on the swings. All the other children who lived in the neighborhood would watch the two of us and be jealous that I had such a fun mother to play with while they only had their weary housekeepers to keep track of them.

  I heard Daddy stomping down the stairs, as loud as usual, although this morning it did not matter how thunderous his footsteps might be, he was not going to disturb Mother’s rest. Daddy could march down the stairs playing a trombone for all it mattered; Mother was not lying alone in bed, the pillow over her head to block out the noise and light. Mother was up.

  I cannot tell you what a miracle it felt like for her to be up.

  Daddy, who slept in a separate room from Mother and did not yet know that she had risen, stopped short at the kitchen doorway, the familiar smell of his Royall Lyme cologne already making its way to my nose.

  “Well, well, well,” he said. “Look who’s awake and about.”

  I remember holding myself very still, making a quick deal with God that if I did not move one inch Daddy’s tone—he often spoke to Mother as if she were a child—would not upset her.

  “That would be me,” said Mother, her voice (thankfully! wonderfully!) light. “Would you like just bacon and eggs for breakfast or would you also like a pancake?”

  Let him sit down and eat with us, I prayed. Let him sit down and eat every bite on his plate.

  “I suppose I have time for a pancake,” he said. “That sounds good.”

  I exhaled, aware that in addition to holding my body still, I had also been holding my breath.

  Daddy walked over to the table and was about to sit down when his gaze landed on the empty cardboard box in the corner of the room.

  “What’s that box doing there?” he asked.

  I didn’t tell him that it had been sitting in the kitchen for the last four days, that he simply hadn’t noticed it before.

/>   He walked over to the box, poking it with the toe of his leather shoe.

  “It’s for Gray-Gray to have her kittens in,” I said. “Mamie says cats like a warm, cozy place to deliver their babies.”

  “I could find that cat a warm, cozy ditch by the side of the road to have her babies in,” said Daddy.

  Immediately I was blinking back tears and experiencing a familiar tightening in my throat. And then Daddy was by my side, kneeling, stroking my cheek with his finger. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. That was a silly joke. It’s just when I brought Gray-Gray home I never intended for her to have a litter of kittens.”

  “But I’ll take care of them!” I said.

  “I know, I know, sweetheart. It’s fine. Pretend Daddy didn’t say anything. It’s a nice box. It’s a perfect box for Gray-Gray’s kittens.”

  AT BREAKFAST I ate three pancakes and would have eaten a fourth had Mother not said that little girls shouldn’t eat more food than their tummies could hold. Daddy ate his pancake in three big bites and then rushed off to Piedmont Hospital, where a year ago he had relocated his practice.

  Mother and I sat at the table, Mother drinking coffee and staring off into space.

  “What do you want to do today, Mama?” I asked, though I rarely called her that.

  She smiled at me and I tried not to notice that her pink lipstick was not applied precisely, that it bled into the faint wrinkles around the sides of her mouth.

  “Why don’t we get dressed up in our very best clothes and white gloves and go to Rich’s? We can buy you a new dress for Easter Sunday and afterwards we’ll have lunch.”

  I knew that shopping for an Easter dress would also mean shopping for white shoes, for while girls at All Saints never wore white shoes during winter, it was almost a mandate that they don a pair to celebrate the Resurrection. The idea of trying on pair after pair of white patent leather Mary Janes sounded beyond tedious to me, but I quickly brushed away all thoughts of impending boredom. It didn’t matter how, Mother and I were going to spend the day together and that would be great no matter what.